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It used to be that I only had seven siblings, but then my widowed mother married a widower, and nine more siblings became a part of it. Brenda is Jim’s oldest, and I am Karol’s youngest. We had only met two times when we decided to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which is a 500-mile trek across northern Spain, ending at the resting place of St. James the Greater’s relics. We will be leaving this summer.

In 2005, Easter was on March 27, and Divine Mercy Sunday was on April 3. It’s the same this year. It will be 141 years before this will happen again. See if you can recall Easter 2005. For me, it will always be bright in my memory.

You know how you sometimes buy a $100 raffle ticket for a chance to win a trip to the Holy Land, and then regret the purchase because for that kind of money, you ought to be walking away with groceries in your hands? But then you realize the money is going for a good cause — the parish — so then you forgive yourself, and then you forget about it, but then you win?

Treasures are funny. So are those little boxes that we keep them in. Usually, when someone finds our treasure chests, the “treasure” part might not be immediately recognizable. I have an old shirt box with scraps of paper, and it is full of gems — that is, they are gems to me: written gems.

There are very few things that I have consistently done since 1988. Some of this is a mercy. Blue eye shadow is no longer among my cosmetics; shoulder pads are absent from my closet. However, since January 1988, two great friends have been in place, and we have a wonderful story.

Each year it’s a little different. Some years the anniversaries pass quietly; this year they were harder. On that December day after Mass when I told my friend that my younger child would have been 25 years old, the intensity of my tears surprised me. It was the same just a few months earlier when my older child would have been 26. The two “counselors” who spoke of the relief that abortion gives never mentioned that the ache of anniversaries intensifies after your own mother dies. Maybe they didn’t know.

High school teachers everywhere know what it is like to have students in class who are only there because it is a requirement. This is why a required speech class can really be an adventure. Public speaking is terrifying! In my experience, there is usually one student who is excited to take the class — and he or she shows up every five or six years.